"Many in the Cartel felt that life was going to become interesting sooner rather than later. As avenues of expansion and exploration dried up and rival empires borders expanded as shown on yet another status report on the Oligarchs desk. Conflict seemed as if it would be an inevitable part of the Cartels future which was a more daunting prospect than it had first seemed when they had launched into the stars. They were surrounded by more powerful neighbours and nearby systems were dotted with hostiles. The oligarch, a venerable old fox simply looked stoically from the office window, standing at the figurative peak of their civilisation, muzzle fur greyed with age. They were ready to make their mark on the galaxy for good or ill. They were ready."
Stardate: 17-03-2240
Here we are again, seems we are in a bit of a lull but I have a feeling that won't last all that long mainly as I am going to make sure it doesn't. I feel as if my best course of action right now is to build up enough and then take out the Uriy Suns before federations and defensive alliances start to form, unless we find a weaker empire nearby it feels like a good goal. Also it is very Fox Cartel, to hit them over the head with a stick and take all their space candy. A lot of nearby systems and hyper-lane routes are blocked by either mining drones or crystalline entities which is yet another reason to continue the military build up.
Alloys continue to be something I am running out of and trading the vast surplus of minerals on the internal market to keep buying them is just a short term fix. Something I'll need to try and improve going forward as well, I have a feeling there will be a lot of exploding ships in the not so distant future. The social division finishes researching the increase to our admin cap just as we get started, that should keep our research nice and speedy for a while longer, let's see what they are offering us next.
Increased population growth, increased habitability, more social research, higher fleet command limit and gene clinics. All of those are kind of useful but nothing jumps out at me as super important so I am keeping with the military improvement strategy, higher fleet command limit is next. Not that we have the naval capacity to make use of it yet but it is good to have for later.
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| Oops, seems we caused them to get hit by a comet.. |
Seems us trying to warn those time-travelling aliens before resulted in them colliding with a comet, so we technically caused it? Time travel is tricky, ah well, we tried at least. It's at this point our furthest flung science ship runs into a system filled with stations and ships, assuming hostile intent they flee. They get labelled as 'Xi Aliens' so let's get the social division working on figuring out who our newest neighbours are. Meanwhile I queue up another mining district on Vulpinus ahead of potentially expanding alloy production later on (not to mention the need for more consumer goods.)
Then something worrying happens, the 'Xi Aliens' turn out to be an entirely space-borne race who live on their vast fleets and stations known as the Dyss Marauders. This could potentially be either really good if they weaken our neighbours or really bad if they decide to kick our front door down and take our stuff. We make contact with them in which they basically tell us if we send any ships into their space don't expect them to return and only contact them if we want to offer tribute or need mercenaries. Well, such insolence will be (eventually) punished so we close the comm-link and get on with more important things.
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| And now we have marauders nearby, this is going to keep things interesting that is for sure. |
A nice shiny new gun for our ships, the plasma thrower causing the admiral to essentially skip to the shipyards as we figure out what we want to research next from our physics division. So let's see, FTL inhibitors, more physics research, better sensors, auxiliary fire control for our ships or mote harvesting. Not the most fantastic selection but whilst my resource income is solid I figure we'll see if we can get an early start on those motes, so let's research Mote Stabilization.
I opt to replace the blue lasers on the Cunning class corvette with two plasma throwers and for the Heuntzelman class destroyer I replace the two stern mass drivers with plasma throwers. I don't want to completely remove mass drivers as they do better against shields. Now we retrofit the new hardware onto our existing ships as I begin preparing to finally let the first fleet loose again. Only for the engineering division to give us improved mass-drivers in the form of coil-guns to add to our fleet as well. Not that I am complaining it just means payback will be a couple of months longer a wait.
We have some interesting options for our next engineering research choice, so let's see what we have. Extra engineering research (pretty standard), exotic gas extraction, rare crystal mining, robotic workers and improvements to corvette build speed and cost. A quick glance at the galaxy map to make sure we have a couple of places we could build gas extractors so that is what I choose to research next. It's then the Yeon Progenitors the second of our fallen empire neighbours makes a slightly worrying request of the Cartel.
Now weird injections from alien robots is one thing but these guys want some of our population for conservation purposes. Now a single unit of population isn't the end of the world but it will naturally make the Fox Cartel a bit unhappy overall, but can I risk annoying a fallen empire this early on? However they may help us in the future so with (probably not a lot of) reluctance I agree to their demands for now. They then immediately open their borders allowing my science ships a route toward the rest of the galaxy at least.
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| Don't worry Foxes, when we have bigger guns we'll come rescue you from the weird bird-people. |
Whilst I wait for the first fleet to retrofit (again) with the new coil-guns we get a new tradition to choose, it's been quite a while since the last one. Continuing with the prosperity tree we have two options, city districts get given an extra clerk job or reduce the build time and cost of planetary buildings and districts, I'll go for the latter for now.
The first fleet makes a flyby of Vulpinus after being fully upgraded, out in front the new Heuntzelman-class destroyers make an impression on the rich and famous gathered to watch as they plot a course to the Uzun system. It's pay back time. The journey will take almost a year but let's hope they fare better this time than they did the last time they entered that system.
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| The first fleet makes a flyby of the homeworld before heading into battle. |
As the fleet arrives in the Uzun system the mining drones hanging in orbit immediately fly into action, engaging the first fleet but this time the outcome is vastly different. The new destroyers and the improved weaponry pulls apart the fleet of drones with frightening ease, plasma fire and mass driver rounds blasting apart their ancient hulls like the scrap they are. Only a handful of ships are lost to the drones, one destroyer and four corvettes however they destroyed all eleven mining drones, seven combat drones and the three larger destroyer sized ones. Not to mention blowing up the abandoned station.
I order the fleet to return home for repairs and have one of our science ships chart a course to Uzun to scan the wreckage for any useful data and finally survey the Uzun system. The plasma throwers definitely proved their worth and there is talk among the admiralty of making it the Cartel's standard weapon.
For now though, bringing this part to a close and I am glad we ended on a space battle again there will be many more and they will be far more epic but the Fox Cartel has only just begun! Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope you enjoyed it and I welcome all the feedback and support!
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| Take that you stupid old scrap robots! |
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